lt is one of the most haunting photos in the Edmonton Journal archives: a picture of Thomas Svekla, dressed in a green camouflage jacket and tinted round sunglasses, smiling tauntingly at the camera, his finger held to his lips. “Shhhh,” he seems to be saying. “I’ve got a secret.”

Rockies tea house serves up a view worth the hike

BANFF, Alta - Before even setting foot outside to begin hiking around one of the most famous spots in Canada, Michael Vincent declares it perfect. "What a day! You can almost hear trumpets!" He throws his arms up in the air. "Dun dada DUN!

"These are the days postcards are made," says the veteran guide.

We step into the photograph at 8:30 am to hike a 5.7-kilo-metre trail which hugs the north edge of Lake Louise before gaining altitude and aiming for the glaciers that feed its ridiculously blue-green waters.

The Plain of Six Glaciers Tea House, a two-storey stone building finished in 1927 and designed to serve as a pit stop between the lake below and the masses of ice above, is the final destination for most hikers along this path. Joy Kimball, who at 78 cruises up the mountain in an hour and a half, still helps out baking homemade chocolate cake, bread and biscuits up here, all without the benefit of electricity. She bought the tea house from the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1959 after seeing an advertisement in the newspaper.

"This has been my life," she says. One of her two daughters, Susanne Gillies-Smith, is now in charge of the family's passion. "I really do believe that for most of the people who come to the tea house, this might be their only hike. So if the tea house wasn't here, they probably wouldn't do it," Ms. Gillies-Smith says while sitting on the upper deck of the tea house, with mountains, moraine and glaciers behind her. "And they probably wouldn't have a chance to see this vista and this kind of atmosphere and feel that peace that surrounds."

The sky is blue, the air is warm. Warm tea biscuits and a cup of green tea with mango sit on a little wooden table, painted red, between us.

About 20,000 pounds of tea house necessities drop from the sky, thanks to a helicopter, each spring and are then stuffed into a tiny shed. More ingredients make it up the mountain during the summer and fall courtesy of packhorses. Employees stay in little cabins steps away from the tea house for five days straight, then down the mountain for two. Fresh goods are backpacked in, garbage out. And the chocolate cake? So good that the Lonely Planet, that ubiquitous backpackers' bible, says it is worth the trek.

Given all that, you would expect the soup of the day to cost more than $5.95. A small pot of tea costs $2.75. At Starbucks, a medium-sized tea will set you back $2.15, but the chance of seeing a mountain goat clinging to a rocky overhang while sipping away is zero. Advantage: tea house. "We could raise the prices,

because once hikers are here, they're here. But I want everyone to experience it," Ms. Gil-lies-Smith says. "We are one of the few places families can come. And we don't want to change that."

By noon, the deck wrapped around the second floor of the tea house is full and quietly humming with foreign languages. The lower deck is filling up. In the kitchen on the first floor of the tea house, Ms. Kimball, with spots flour on her hands and face, pours thick chocolate batter into a pan. The wood stove with which she learned to bake bread -- you need extra yeast to make it rise on chilly mornings, she says -- has been replaced with a propane one. She's wearing a white apron, just like her daughter, busy in the crowded kitchen.

Visitors rarely venture off the stones and benches that Banff National Park puts down near the tea house. It is as if there's a red velvet rope they dare not approach. But if they did -- and they can, there are no rules against exploring beyond the beaten path -- they too could frolic in the secret grass meadow where Ms. Gillies-Smith played as a child and soaks up the calm as an adult.

In the clearing, a marmot stood stiff as a statue and issued a warning whistle to his kin as we approached. The trick to getting close to animals that are used to being prey, Ms. Gillies-Smith says, is to look at them, then look away. Look at them, look away.

(When Ms. Kimball bought the tea house, a pet marmot named Charlotte came with the package.)

The two caves near the top of the rock slide near the tea house also go largely unexplored. So do the mountains cuddling the tea house where Ms. Gillies-Smith and her sister chased goats and played hide-and-go-seek as kids.

That marmots, chipmunks, goats and, yes, even grizzlies, still share the mountains with us human interlopers is what makes Lake Louise so special -- and valuable, says Mr. Vincent, the guide.